FORT COLLINS — Helene Sposato's cheery voice on the phone sounds like a friendly neighbor a few houses down the street. You don't know her well, but she's pleasant when you meet on the sidewalk. She's not pushy or overly nosy. She cleans up after her dog.

"If you don't mind me asking a few questions to better assist you," Sposato says into her headset. "And I see that you've verified your Social in the system. I appreciate that. Is there a number ...(laughs) — that's awesome!"

Sposato sits in a room full of new Comcast customer-service employees with headsets just like hers. Nobody in the room is yelling into a phone or badgering the customer on the other end. The crew — which will top out at at 600 — works at Comcast's new Center of Excellence, based in a former Hewlett-Packard office in Fort Collins.

But this is no ordinary customer-service center. This is Comcast's future. It's one way Comcast is attempting to fix the cable and internet provider's subpar reputation with, well, mostly everyone in America.

"Transformations are hard. I don't want you to get the sense that this has all been easy," said Dana Crandall, vice president for customer experience for Comcast's West Division, which includes Colorado. "It's been an evolution."

For years, Comcast and its cable and satellite TV competitors have ranked among the worst industries for customer service. Consumers moaned about paying for channels they never watched or groaned about having to renegotiate bills when promotions expire. Pay TV providers didn't seem to care.

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And Comcast, Colorado's and the nation's largest cable TV provider, remains near the bottom of the list, if not at the bottom — as 24/7 Wall Street's Customer Service Hall of Shame ranked the Philadelphia-based cable firm in 2017, 2016 and 2015.

Nevertheless, Comcast has fared better than pay-TV competitors based on paying subscribers. While Comcast lost 125,000 video customers in its most recent quarter — the company blamed streaming video competitors and recent hurricanes — its internet service has thrived and has 2.2 million more subscribers than it did three years ago. Currently, subscribers are at 29.1 million, including about a million in Colorado.

While the company and its industry seemed unwilling to change over the past 10 years, the threat of customers leaving, competitive streaming-video alternatives and embarrassing social-network moments have slapped Comcast to attention.

The customer-service turning point for Comcast seems to stem from a July 14, 2014, phone call that went viral. Frustrated customer Ryan Block posted online eight minutes of a call in which he attempted to cancel his Comcast service. The representative repeatedly demanded a reason, dismissing Block's response of "That's what we want to do."

Comcast executives publicly apologized to Block the next day.

Steve Kroeger, director, poses for a photo at the Ft. Collins call center on Oct. 24, 2017. In 2014, a customer's call to Comcast customer service went viral. The Comcast CEO ultimately apologized and vowed to change the way his company interacted with customers. One of the vows was to create five new customer service centers nationwide (John Leyba / THE DENVER POST)

Within the year, Comcast shared how it would reinvent customer experience. It would hire 5,500 customer-service employees and open five new facilities, like the one in Fort Collins. It promised to revamp its entire customer-service system, from making billing more transparent to focusing on getting things right with the customer on the first contact. It now uses the Net Promoter System, which calls customers after a service call to ask, "How likely are you to recommend Xfinity from Comcast?" More recently, it introduced its "a la carte" option, Xfinity Instant TV, an $18-a-month add-on plan offering local TV channels streamed to existing internet subscribers.

The latest results include receiving 11 million fewer calls this year as more customers went online to manage accounts and troubleshoot. Its digital team has responded to customers 732,000 times on social media since 2015. And its NPS score out of a possible 100? Comcast won't say, but it has "seen double-digit improvements."

"We've reoriented the company and employees in thinking and measuring through a customer's eyes," said Crandall, who said a change was already in the works prior to, "as we fondly refer to it, the Ryan Block call."

But, she added, the call "really helped solidify our commitment and accelerated some of the changes we knew were necessary," she said. "Often in transformation, those moments can be used to galvanize the organization."

Reversing a reputation

Like many longtime cable TV customers, Highlands Ranch resident Susan Ott is used to the drill. Each year, she calls Comcast after promotions end and her monthly bill balloons. She plays the game to get a better price.

"I guess we stick with them because it's a pain to change and we're not sure any other company would be any better," said Ott, who has been with Comcast for 19 years. "I guess we're probably getting a decent deal (at $156 a month), but it was nice paying $130 per month last year."

In three years, Comcast's Broadcast TV fee has jumped 500 percent to $7.85 in the Denver area. On average this year, Comcast said that the average customer bills nationally will increase by about 3.8 percent, or less than half the increase the company faces for higher programming costs.

"The costs we are charged to carry popular networks continue to increase significantly — especially broadcast television and sports programming, which are the largest drivers of increases in price adjustments," said Sarah Murphy, vice president of sales and marketing for Comcast's Mountain West Region.

Customer sentiment, however, isn't just about price hikes, said David VanAmburg, director of The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which ranked Comcast the fourth lowest of about 220 companies for customer service. Often, price hikes for monthly services don't include anything new, leaving consumers wondering why are they paying more. Plus, it's less of an issue for some, including Netflix, than others, such as Comcast, he said.

"This is compounded when the company, like Comcast, already has a long history of low customer satisfaction," VanAmburg said in an email. "In other words, companies that excel in satisfying customers can more easily get away with price increases without sapping too much customer satisfaction because they have built up a lot of goodwill with their customer base."

Reversing the trend especially for entrenched cable companies such as Comcast is difficult, added Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the video industry.

"The challenge in the pay TV industry, particularly for cable, is consumers don't really feel they have a choice, especially long-term customers," he said. "That's the challenge for a big provider like Comcast. They're starting with customers whose fists are clenched. I think they're trying as hard as they can."

In the Denver area, CenturyLink competes on internet and does offer TV service in some cities, but it, too, has its share of low ratings and consumer complaints.

But little things apparently help. Doug Hubka, who lives in Lakewood, wrote in to say he was giving Comcast an A+ because customer service figured out over the phone that he needed a booster to improve reception. A tech visited his home and fixed the problem.

But just hours later, Hubka wrote in again — Comcast had charged $70 for the in-home visit.

"I am tired of all the hassle," said Hubka, who downgraded Comcast to a B- for not being told upfront about the home-visit fee. He got it reversed because Comcast said it was supposed to offer its $4.99 monthly protection plan as an alternative.

One of Comcast's challenges is that its reputation is being compared to Amazon or the neighborhood grocer, said Aimee Lucas, a vice president with the Temkin Group, which surveys 10,000 consumers to rank companies from best to worst. Temkin this year ranked Comcast at 329 out of 331 companies.

"The thing is when I'm comparing my cable company or supermarket or my bank, I'm not just comparing that experience to another bank but across industries. Regardless of what category the company is in, my expectations are shaped by the best airline or my best shopping experience," Lucas said. "I'm not comparing apples to apples. And it's not: Comcast is better than Charter. But how does Comcast compare to Amazon? That makes it tough for companies."

Comcast's score came in at 47 percent, below Temkin's TV and internet industry average of 54 percent.

But not all video services with monthly fees have terrible customer service. Proving this are companies such as Netflix, at 74 percent, and Amazon Prime video, at 73 percent. Lucas said sites such as Netflix set the bar for customer service, and it's already familiar to users, which shapes a person's experience.

It could take a company such as Comcast years to reverse its poor ratings but only if leadership truly wants it, Lucas said.

"If they don't change what they're doing, the risk is losing customers who defect. ... Those (leaders) who want to change, they've got to narrow their focus on a few things that matter most to customers," Lucas said. "You bumped up my rates, but if I threaten to cancel, they agree. Why? It shouldn't be that way."

A new beginning?

Nobody looks grumpy on a recent morning at Comcast's Learning Nucleus, the name of the new training centers. This one, in Fort Collins, looks more like a lounge with all the overhead lights on. Cushioned seats are arranged in a circle in the middle as if surrounding a fire pit. There are two rows of training desks. And there's plenty of room to walk around, as some employees do while holding a tablet and listening to training sessions.

"C'mon, who are we?" shouts a trainer.

"Comcast!" the several dozen trainees answer back.

"That's right! We're the best darn rootin'-tootin' call center this side of Colorado. And you'd better believe it," yells the trainer.

It's the daily wake-up call in which new hires share excessive amounts of enthusiasm. It's difficult to know whether this is natural pep or forced because a Denver Post reporter is in the room.

Changes: Have you noticed?

If a technician is late, Comcast will automatically credit the customer $20.

All bill changes must be approved by the customer, who can see right away how a new service or fee affects the monthly bill.

All orders provide a digital confirmation.

A billing service representative is trained to also tackle repairs and other issues to avoid transferring callers into oblivion.

If you live in Comcast's western region, which includes Colorado, you'll probably get a Fort Collins operator for repair and billing issues. But if you call between midnight and 6 a.m., you may be routed to a third-party center.

Customers with voice-controlled remotes can now speak to access their account, restart devices or get help.

Comcast neighborhood stores are being revamped to offer customer support.

Not too long ago, new hires for Comcast customer service jobs were stuck inside a classroom eight hours a day for six weeks before taking their first customer call. Nowadays, new employees learn at their own pace. Some start taking live calls by the second week.

"The best way to learn is having an experience. That's why we went to experiential learning to get them hands-on and involved in their role early on instead of sitting in a classroom for six weeks," said Walter Smith, Comcast University's manager for learning and development. "Learn as you go, practice it as you go and apply that knowledge."

Comcast's rebirth has a long way to go, and the company acknowledges this. But the key to fixing its reputation started with its employees.

"A happy employee supports a happy customer," said Crandall. "We are actually investing a significant amount of time with our employees today."

For example, Crandall said, during Hurricane Harvey, a customer-service employee in St. Paul, Minn., was able to get the message to higher-ups that he was receiving numerous calls from displaced customers. Within days, the company was able to allow customers to access TV on their smartphones without typical validation methods.

"If they hadn't set it up, we couldn't detect that they were in their home. We had trouble identifying them," Crandall said. "But we were able to open up our streaming TV service to all customers without requiring them to enter a password while at the same time protecting their information. We've become much more agile."

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